A Canticle for Lawliet
by Underwater Owl
Summary: Twenty-five moments along the way. This is more of a character sketch than a story.
1. Chapter 1

Zero-

He's born. It's an alarming experience, for all concerned. He doesn't scream, he's grey, his umbilical cord comes out around his neck and the nurses make some noise about possible strangulation. He's breathing, but very still, when they hand him to the doctor for inspection. The doctor gives his worried mother a smile, and then gives L a knowing look. Then breathes a sharp puff of air into his face.

The baby startles, goes white, and then bright pink. His face contorts in surprise and rage and he lets out a shrieking wail of dismay, and begins flailing and kicking for all he's worth. His mother gasps in relief, and holds out her arms for the newborn.

He doesn't know this story. Later, he'll wonder what he weighed, what time of day he was born, how many Halloween emergencies came in while his mother was in labour. The answers to these questions are seven point two ounces, 3:38 pm, and three, all related to pumpkin carving.

One-

They enter the eighties. His father goes out and gets a prostitute on New Year's Eve, while his mother stays in. Later that week they get a message from his father's work, saying that he's being transferred to England.

While it's statistically true that abusive relationships and incidences of domestic violence are more likely to occur in lower-income households, the exception is what makes the rule, and L's parents are quite well off. Well, his father is. His mother is a house wife. She feels trapped, and he promises every time afterwards that it's never going to happen again. The same story as everywhere, except for L's father's alcohol is a little more expensive.

So they ship across the sea, to where L's father speaks the language, and his mother doesn't. His father has a job with some sort of software company, and he's an intelligent man and well spoken and almost never drunk at work (though he keeps cocaine in his office desk, of all the places) and they're not going to go back to Japan, are they? His mother struggles in the super market, looking at the cheerios suspiciously before putting them into her cart, and struggles with the money, and doesn't make any friends.

Two-

L's parents don't believe that he's really figuring out reading, when he plays with the news paper, and don't believe he's doing more than making a mess, when he arranges cheerios into piles that double, then double, then double again. In fact, his mother is privately sure he's developmentally delayed, given that he hasn't spoken a single word, as of yet. He considers reassuring her that he's getting to it, but she'd just cry and be a bother and he'd much rather explore and count and see _everything._ He learns concepts before he has words for them, so he makes them up, and still will privately revert to that language in his head years later.

When they're young, most children play with dolls and things, or play house, to teach them to fill the societal roles they'll occupy a few years down the line. Little girls make their baby dolls say 'mama,' in order to practice. L never wastes his time doing any of that. Whatever he attempts, he does _right, _so how could he need to indulge in this play-phase? Besides, such things fundamentally don't interest him. His games are about exploration. He uses blocks, not to build towers, but to understand weight and balance and spatial problems, though he doesn't know the words for them at the time.

His father finally notices he exists, and it isn't a good thing. Child services stop by after the third hospital visit, and make noises about taking him away. His mother is quiet, his father is respectable, so nothing comes of it.

Despite the fact that his knee is scraped so badly that the blood is soaking through the cotton bandages wrapped around it. Despite the fact that he's _two years old _with a broken wrist. His mother explains shyly that he's an adventurous little thing, who likes to climb trees and isn't afraid of falling, and L sits silently and solemnly, with his fingers in his mouth. He remembers, a few years later, this incident, and this being the first time he became aware of the concept of a lie. The idea of telling something that you knew was _not true. _He watched the conversation with fascination. Later, the man conducting the interview will swear he felt like something was up, but that he just couldn't come up with the grounds to get the little boy with the great big eyes out of there, because he wasn't sure if it was cultural differences, or what. The neighbours will say the mother always looked hopeless. His mother will stand up in court and proclaim that it wasn't her fault.

Three-

L understands everything very quickly, but he doesn't understand why his father is sleeping in the middle of the afternoon, and how the pain from the big hole in his side didn't wake him up. He thinks that would have hurt. It always hurts when he's bleeding, and sometimes it makes it so he can't sleep. He also can't sleep too well when he's on the floor, and his father never sleeps in the kitchen. He knows that these things mean something is wrong, so he sits down next to her to wait until he wakes up.

He goes out into the street to get help, when he _stays _asleep, at about two am when he can hardly keep his eyes open, and a bunch of teenagers, out to cause trouble, find him. It could have been really dangerous, but since he's two and blood coated and sniffling they do the right thing and phone the police, and the body is discovered, though the details of how the murder happened are hazy. His mother is rushed, also shot but just clinging on, to the hospital. She's arrested for the murder of her husband later that week, once her condition is stabilized. Child services takes L, and moves him to a foster home, and gradually he stops crying for his mother at night.

Four-

His foster parents know he's gifted. It's obvious to anyone who looks close for more than a fraction of a second. They can't afford much, but they do get a government person in to see about testing, for school scholarships. _Just think, _Doris says, _if he got a scholarship to somewhere prestigious? He could really go places, Eric. _Eric nods and hopes so, for Lawliet's sake. They're good people, and they love all the children who come into their home, and want them to do their best.

Little Lawliet scores wildly off the charts in every manner. They give him the tests for children five years older than him, too, and he completes those, with ease. Actual knowledge of facts and cultural context is limited, just because the information he's had access to is also limited, but he demonstrates near-perfect recall, excellent problem solving skills, a better grasp of language than adults occasionally have, and a special affinity to puzzles.

Quillish Whammy hears about him, swoops in, and rescues him from it all. He gives Doris and Eric a small amount of money (more than they've ever had) and thanks them, and reassures them that L is going to get a chance to fulfill his creative potential. He tells them not to worry on his behalf. He sends someone to break in at night, and start a fire, and Doris and Eric and the children are alright, but the house is burnt to the ground, along with any pictures they might have taken of little L Lawliet. All records of him mysteriously disappear out of city hall. Quillish personally burns the child's birth certificate, the day before he turns five, after the tests have continued and he is still excelling.

Five-

The grooming is subtle, but important. L gets to do what he wants in terms of diet, but has to take vitamins. L gets to do what he wants when he's awake, but has to conform to Whammy's increasingly gruelling sleep schedule. Eventually, he only needs five hours a night, to be completely rested. Whammy would like to make that number smaller, but little Lawliet is beginning to develop dark circles under his eyes, and he wouldn't want him to cave from the pressure. Besides, the boy said he did his best thinking when he had just woken up. All the same, Whammy had to explain several times about Winston Churchill, who almost never slept throughout the war, and who got so much more done because of it, while L rubbed at his eyes and yawned and looked back down at the battle strategies he's been analyzing, as his puzzle for this week.

Six-

"Do I _have _to?" whines L, looking up at Watari with irritation, as the man offers him his shoes to wear for the day. Childish demeanour aside, he's very nervous about that question. Very seldom does he challenge Watari's authority on any matter, and this seems like a good way of testing the water. That, and he isn't actually fond of shoes at all.

"They make me think slower. Decrease my ability to reason."  
Watari just looks surprised at being spoken to. L is a quiet child, for the most part, unless he's replying to a direct question, in which case he gives long, precisely detailed answers.

"No, you don't have to. Reason is paramount." He turns around, to put the shoes away in the closet. He imagines they won't be coming out again for a long time. The little boy is chewing on his thumb, looking startled, mulling over what Watari has just said.

Reason is paramount.

And he can do anything he wants.

"Mr Whammy?"  
"Watari, L, you must get in the habit of calling me Watari."

"Watari. Marshmallows would help me think."

The old man gives him a shrewd little smile.

"Not before breakfast, L."

His face falls. Oh well, it was worth a try.

But _after _breakfast, there's a bowl of marshmallows sitting next to his computer, which makes him think that he could probably get used to this.

Seven-

"Surely you've had macaroons before," Watari murmurs, patting a bright-eyed little L on the top of the head. "Doris used to make them, didn't she?"

"Who's Doris?" asks L, earnestly, arranging the cookies into a star on the plate, and then a hexagon, and then a tower, each time getting a little smaller as they disappear. He still loves sugar; Watari wonders if he's ever going to grow out of it, or if he's going to just continue keeping small third world countries in business with the amount he consumes.

"You don't remember?" It wouldn't surprise him; amnesia to repress trauma is not uncommon in children of L's age, having gone through the sort of thing that he did.

"Evidently not," replies the eight year old, who is developing just enough of a snide streak to both test Watari's patience and encourage him. L, to be the L he wants to be, needs to have a backbone, to do what he does. If that starts by being a little snippy witht he man who brings you your tea, then that's fine with Watari. Especially since he doesn't exactly have an inferiority complex, in this situation. L could win a debate with Watari with his hands down, but he couldn't win an argument with a sniper rifle. If the little boy gets too out of control, and his heart constricts at the thought because he's fairly sure he loves L, but _if _he gets out of control...

No, Watari probably wouldn't have the heart to shoot him. They'll just have to hope that L doesn't get out of control.

Eight-

"Alright, L," Watari says, setting papers down on the table with breakfast the croissant and tea. L peers at them, before reaching for the sugar bowl. "We have a new kind of puzzle for you today. I want you to look at these facts, and see if you can deduce who stole the diamonds from what you have here."

"What if I need more information?" asks L, dipping a bit of croissant into his newly sweetened tea.

"I can get it for you," Watari assures him, trying to keep his patience and not push the papers towards the eight year old.

"'Deduction' isn't really a good word for what you're having me do," L complains, still eating his croissant, "deduction implies I'm going to create a hypothesis and test it. This is really more of an inductive approach. It's obviously an actual crime."

"What makes you say that?"

L gives him a flat, irritated, childish look.

"It was obvious, Watari. You've been building toward this for years now."

He nods. What can he do but admit it?


	2. Chapter 2

Nine-

"I don't like these," L complains, tugging at his karate uniform, "Watari, they're itchy, Watari." He still whines a little when he gets overloaded, and the quickest way to get him there is to give him rough fabrics. That, or to make him wear shoes. The sensei raises his eyebrows, and Watari pats L firmly on the top of his head.

"You'll be fine. Now go, show him what you can do."

The sensei is impressed, despite himself. L looks like a good wind could knock him over, but he picks up what he's taught with patience, diligence, and precise concentration. Two hours of difficult work, and the little boy finally starts panting, sallow skin flushed from exertion, hair everywhere. He looks alarmingly happy about it, too, even though he staggers a little when he bows and has to sit down because he's light headed and drink water.

"Can we try again next week?" the little boy pleads, "I like it. I can do better."

"You did well," the teacher assures him, but it doesn't seem to soothe him, for some reason. "We will try again next week."

That does it. L looks like he wants to hug him, but he isn't really good with children, so he bows and leaves, and yes, comes back and tries again next week.

L gets better.

Ten-

"I'm going on the phone with who?" L asks, again, as though he doesn't quite believe it.

"The United Nations," Watari says, sink or swim; "and you're connected."

"Hello?" asks the speaker. L looks at his computer screen, and the large letter projected on it, and slouches a little as he concentrates.

"I am L," is what he says, first of all, a little startled at the way his voice distorts. Glad that it hides basically all inflection; he wouldn't want to give away too much. "I understand you have a problem that you need help with."

"Yes. It's a pleasure to speak with you," bless the chair, he's well spoken and unrattled, as far as L can tell. He doesn't know what he'd do if the first person he talked to was angry, or afraid sounding.

"And you, sir. Please, tell me the details of the case."

Eleven-

He takes down his first cartel when he's eleven years old, in record speed. In record everything, actually, no eleven year old has ever demolished a major drug ring, and never so neatly. But he amasses the evidence, through backwards investigation of who has disappeared, and the likeliest place to find a body. He links the major kingpins (yes, all of them) to three murders each, and neatly drops the evidence to a clean police officer. He rigs it that the trials will be held with a judge who can't be bought. He speaks with said judge in advance and makes sure her friends and family are well out of the country. He assigns the man Watari knows, Aiber, to remain with her at all times.

She survives the investigation, but retires once the guilty verdict is passed down. Apparently she and Aiber are getting married, of all things, and are going to have a baby. A jurist in love with a con-man and ex-assassin, who'd have thought it? Watari certainly wouldn't have, but L only smiles knowingly when he finds out.

He's an eleven year old who knows perhaps a little too much for his own good.

Twelve-

"Your mother's execution date is coming up," says Watari.

"Speaking of which," replies L, "why don't you give me murder cases?"

"What?"

"I can only assume you're trying to shield me, Watari, but I think my imaginary naivete is a small price to pay for being able to stop society's worst offenders, don't you? If I can do more good investigating other cases, then certainly don't keep them from me just because of my _age. _It's not as if I'm unfamiliar with the concept."

The twelve year old sacrifices a bit of the immense weight of maturity his words carry, by chasing the marshmallow in his hot chocolate around for a moment or two with his tongue.

"I don't think it's really appropriate, L," murmurs Watari, faintly disturbed. By the notion of giving his ward detailed files on homicide, obviously, not by the fact that he's playing with his food, as usual. There's nothing new about that.

"Don't be absurd. You know I'm right. You know it's inevitable. Why else would you have raised me like this?"

He nods. Again, what can he do, but admit it? This is what L was created to be.

Thirteen-

He's had his wisdom teeth out and his mind is bending under the weight of the codeine for the first three days. The first especially; he sits with his eyes crossing and uncrossing, making curious noises at Watari whenever he wanders by. Drugs hit L hard, it seems.

But the fourth day the swelling has started to go down, and he's only mildly dazed, rather than completely zoned out. He sets about creating fake operations for the fifty or so identities he holds, so that all of them will have had their wisdom teeth out too; that's a surprising number of documents to falsify, but it's better that than be caught over something so very, stupidly obvious. He's lucky he isn't much prone to cavities, otherwise his life would be nothing but paperwork, and there probably aren't enough dentists in the _world _to bribe to keep up with fillings on all the people he pretends to be. Same story with Watari's operation on his knee; although he maintains that his survival undercover isn't as vital, L points out that if _Watari _is caught, then L most certainly will be too, so they might as well maintain the ruse for both of them.

Fourteen-

A has never been well. Not really. Circuits got a tiny bit crossed in the brain pan, you see, and then R and W made it worse, and B made it unbearable. He was doomed before he even started.

Then, he started, and he was _destroyed. _Careful tests calculated, twisted, turned and prodded in an attempt to replicate the experiment that was L. The little dark eyed boy had grown up into a thirteen year old wonder of reasoning, with unprecedented test scores. He had become _invaluable._

They needed another like him.

In trying to recreate any result, there will always be mishaps. If it was easy, to create an L, then everyone would have done it by now. B and A are able bodied, and relatively functioning, at first. C does nothing more than blink his big dark eyes, open and closed. D and E do not even open theirs. The men in charge acknowledge that they will have to work with what they've got so far.

Then; a blur, of hurt and fright, of tests and tests and not quite good enough, and then there is only B. L reads the reports of the incident dazedly, while he makes a human genome out of liquorice twizzles. It's strange to think of Watari (who is Watari who's-taken-care-of-him-since-he-was-little-and-brings-him-tea) as having driven someone to kill themselves.

"What went wrong?" he asks.

"He couldn't be you," says Watari, curtly.

"Is it so important that he was?"

"It is everything, L."

"Why didn't I snap, then?"

"Because you're better than him."

"What if I hadn't been better?"

"Then you'd have snapped."

"_Mr Whammy!"_

"L, it's true."

And that's it for the discussion.

Fifteen-

'Mr Coil, come find me' was how the note began, and that was essentially the goal, wasn't it? An inauspicious beginning to a series of events that started with raspberry vinegrette and ended with a game of cat and mouse in a posh bistro.

He was to meet L in the restaurant some time between the hours of noon and one thirty. He was to be there for all of that time period. L would be there also. The first one to know the other would win the challenge; would get to set the terms for their final... confrontation. It wasn't high-stakes. He was confident, he mused to himself as the waiter set the menu on the table before him, that he could win whatever 'battle' they decided to have. So this wasn't serious.  
All the same, it was undeniably _fun._ He's in the restaurant early, waiting for a good friend. It's eleven, they'll have an eleven thirty business meeting, eat and talk until one fifteen, and he'll sit alone at his table reading over the files given to him until one thirty, and then go and spot whoever had been sitting alone, or stayed for all that time.

Hands entered into his peripheral vision, startling him. The waiter unobtrusively fills up his water glass, and asks if he'd like to place an order.

"I'm waiting for an associate, actually," he admits, "he'll be here in twenty minutes or so." He gave the young man a thin smile. Which the waiter returned with a sort of shy charm.

"I should," said the waiter, moving to head back toward the kitchen, and Coil watched him go, or rather, watched his ass as he went.

The unfortunate thing was that L _didn't show._ The business meeting comes and goes, and he waits the prescribed time, and _no one_ in the restaurant stays that long.

So he pays his bill, with irritation, gives his waiter a reasonable tip, and storms into the street. It's on the drive back to the airport, that he feels the paper in his pocket. It startles him. He doesn't know how it got there. So he pulled it out, and would have thrown it out, except that... it wasn't just his receipt. There was something written there. He pulled it open and glanced over it.

_"Shit!"_

"Is everything alright, sir?" asks the driver, at the burst of expressive profanity, glancing back in the mirror at the white-faced Mr Coil.

"I'm fine," he says, marvelling at the neatly written words, flashing back to thin white hands curled around the edges of a china plate, and haunting dark eyes, 'The salmon special is rather good.' "I just lost a bet."

"Very good sir," says the limo driver, turning his attention back to the road.

_Mr Coil,_ reads the note.  
_I win._

Sixteen-

He assumes he's asexual. All evidence points in that direction. But then there's a strange twist of events. He comes down with a worrisomely high fever from drinking the water in Ethiopia, (he didn't mean to, he honestly just used it to wet his toothbrush) and is taken to a hospital, under an identity who happens to still be fourteen. They put him in the children's ward, and set him up in a bed, and there's a little sick girl in the bed next to him who, the next morning, asks him brightly if he wants to watch a movie. She has leukemia and he's fairly sure there's some social dictate that says you don't say no to small children with leukemia, so he lets her put one on.

It's Willy Wonka and the Chocolate factory, which makes his mouth water from the very beginning. Then, Gene Wilder, as Willy Wonka, steps on screen.

He dreams about him later, and L realizes that he wonders what that man would taste like to kiss: chocolate, strawberries, sugar...?

This means he's probably not asexual after all.


	3. Chapter 3

Seventeen-

Seventeen-

"We might have a problem I haven't discussed with you," says Watari, over tea at the end of the day. "With one of your other successors."

"Oh? Has Mello finally killed Near?" asks L, who isn't taking him seriously. He's piling sugar cubes into a tower instead.

"It's B."

That gets his attention, exhausted as he is. He stills, and glances up, eyebrows arched. He hasn't made it a secret that he doesn't approve of what Watari and Roger have done with A and B. Especially since A killed himself, it turns out, after a series of assaults from B, and the murder of the kitten they shared; he felt that sort of proved his point.

"What about him?" Watari doesn't usually like to bring these things up after L's tennis matches, he usually gives him tea and sends him to get some sleep.

"He's escaped."

"Ah." L flicks the bottom sugar cube, and sends his tower crashing down on the coffee table. Some of the cubes crumble, and the mess goes everywhere. Watari bites back a rude comment about making needless mess. He gets the message.

L rises awkwardly to his feet, and slouches his way over to his computer, bare feet shuffling on the carpet. He has a homicidal successor to try to track down, while Watari cleans up the smaller mess.

Eighteen-

Wedy and L like fighting each other for the same exact reason.  
Neither of them 'goes easy' on the other.  
Wedy is blond, beautiful, blue eyed, and just lithe enough to pass for delicate. Men in gyms inevitably try a pick up line, right before her elbow connects. Frequently, right after, too. Men are stupid that way. L is important, intelligent, wiry. He can't be hurt, because then who would save the world? And Watari scares all instructors into walking on eggshells around him well before they ever meet him.  
When they first meet, they look at each other, and see something mutual.  
When they first fight, her knees slams up, aiming for his crotch. His elbow connects with her jaw with a sickening sound. He breaks two fingers, she cracks a tooth. He isn't very good, but he's vicious. She's excellent, but she hasn't had enough practise. They decide that she can learn on him. The decide that she can teach him.  
They're more careful, after that, but things aren't really any less brutal. The doctors all wonder. Watari's hair starts going grey a little faster. L is routinely limping. Wedy's mother asks if she's in an abusive relationship.  
L stops walking so much. Wedy stops visiting her mother so often; when she does, she wears foundation, and long sleeved shirts.  
They meet Sundays. Then Tuesdays, too.  
"I'm leaving for Spain," L tells her, finally, two years after they've started.  
"Fuck you," says Wedy. He damn well owes her better than that.  
She kicks, he dodges, and kicks back. He connects. She yelps, and lunges for him.  
They hit the mat hard, his head connects with the floor. She loses her breath. They roll. His knee connects with her thigh, she bites down hard on his ear, he yells.  
They fight. Until she is black and blue and _her_ fingers are broken this time, and his ankle is sprained and an eye is black.  
Then, they sit on the floor together and laugh, with tears threatening to creep in around the edges.

Nineteen-

In Paris, he commits his one act of teenaged rebellion. He sneaks out of the hotel room; or rather, walks out, while Watari watches him on camera, without letting him know where he's going. He only heads down to the lobby, and the hotel bar, and settles down to drink a glass of ginger ail, (he's too nervous to order anything stronger.) There's a singer, doing renditions of Edith Piaf songs, quite poorly, but he sits and listens to her for hours, anyways. After her set, she sidles over, all slink and red dresses, and sits down next to him and asks him to buy her a drink. So he does, toes curling nervously in his tennis shoes.

She's young, and can't make the rent, ever, and he's young and is starved for affection, though he doesn't know it. They feel a connection that she swears is fate and he realizes is probably nerves and hormones and circumstances, and she drinks her drink and grabs him by the collar of his white, long sleeved shirt. They kiss in the bar, until they're asked to leave, and then they kiss in the elevator. He stops to ask if he's doing it right, and she giggles at him and tugs him out on the second floor, towards her room instead of his. They get inside and she licks the skin under his ear, and makes him shiver. She has condoms, and they have sex, a little awkwardly and a little messily, with her knickers down and her slinky dress rucked up around her waist. He kisses all her lipstick off, and is silent, except for the occasional, startled gasp. Until it's over.

He kisses her goodbye, wipes the lipstick off his face and goes up to his room where he becomes L again, simple as that, the person who is not-quite-human.

Twenty-

Mello sits down with him over tea and chocolate cookies, and L tells him about his experience with B, a few months ago. It's for a case-report Mello is doing for one of Roger's classes, L isn't sure why, or if he even likes the idea of leaving a permanent record of his actions behind... but if anyone knows how to be circumspect, he supposes it's Mello. He won't use the information in a way that'd be damaging to the title he hopes to succeed to one day.

Being twenty and thinking in terms of 'when I die' is both alarming, and incredibly necessary, which is again, alarming in and of itself.

"And then B _lit himself on fire?" _asks Mello, irritation mixed with awe; it's an epic story, but an alarming one, involving the gruesome murders of two adults and a child.

"He did," agrees L, "in an intention to create the perfect crime, that I'd be unable to solve. Fortunately Agent Misora managed to put him out in time, and apprehended him. We have him in custody now, sedated, mostly, while the burns heal. I'll interrogate him once he's lucid and let you know the results."

"Why do you want to interrogate him?" asks Mello, uncertainly.

"Well, I don't believe he killed just the three people, do you?"

Twenty one-

"Watari," says L, suddenly, dropping his chocolate chip cookie. "You're not going to... retire, soon, are you?"

"What?" replies Watari. "No, of course not. We can't risk the security breach. What brought that on, L?"

"I don't want you to get hurt."

"_What?"  
_"Well, aside from planning to put me down if I stepped out of line, you were a parental figure through my childhood." Watari shouldn't be surprised that L knew about that, but of course he did. He of all people would be able to assess the risk he posed to the world as a loose canon.

"So I'm family?"

"Homicidal impulses aside."

"Of course. Will you be sleeping tonight, L?" Since he occasionally doesn't, it's prudent to ask. Especially given the routine he subsequently enters into.

"No thank you. I'll have hot chocolate and coffee and jel-"

"-jelly beans, and marshmallows with but not in the hot chocolate and lychee icecream after the coffee."

"Precisely. I should be lost without my Boswell."

"Don't quote books I gave you to read at me, young man, I know them better than you do."

Twenty two-

Matt is losing interest in the program, and L isn't sure, from reading the files, how to motivate him again. Or if he should even bother. Mello and Near are promising candidates, they'd make good successors, either one of them (especially both of them) and Matt isn't driven enough to be able to work at the speed, and complete the amount of cases L traditionally has per year. The transition would be best if it were seamless, and therefore, he marks the status down as 'discarded' with casual disregard, and goes back to reading Mello and Near's latest case reports.

After a moment's thought, he goes back to the other window and makes a note to Roger to keep Matt enrolled in his program of study (though he hardly attends classes any longer,) since his calmness seems to be Mello's ballast.

Hopefully Matt's brand of calm will be exchanged for Near's in the future, and M and N can depend on each _other, _but as far as L knows at the moment he has years left to sort that out, so for now he focuses on continuing to teach them what they need to know, rather than what they have to be in order to be L.

Twenty three-

Watari gets him a book about obedience studies, and L temporarily becomes so depressed with the state of the human race that he considers resigning from his position as the world's three greatest detective. If an even sixty six percent of people are willing to electrocute each other to death on the say so of a scientist, their only concern being whether or not they were responsible for what occurred, then maybe he doesn't want any part in saving them.

"Don't be dramatic," says Watari, setting a milkshake down in front of him. "Eat your strawberries."

"Et tu, Watari," mutters L, following his mentor's instructions and stopping in surprise as he's pulled into a brief, faintly awkward hug. Watari has mid-life crisises and gets affectionate at the oddest moments and about the strangest things.

He decides that he isn't going to give up humanity for lost, because thirty four percent is at least _something _to hold on to, and because if he walked away from this now then he'd be the person who disavowed responsibility for his actions, and _he _isn't the sort to electrocute the man in the other room.

Twenty four-

L doesn't understand any of it. He thinks this is probably a watershed occasion. Even at his most confused, he tends to be able to put bits and pieces together, maybe not the whole story, but the outline of the puzzle. After all, he traced Kira to Japan, from Japan to a student of a specific district, from that student to a police man's family, all the way down to too-intelligent-for-his-own-good Yagami Light.

He doesn't hesitate to admit that there has been a certain perverse enjoyment in the chase so far. If it had been fencing, he would not have hesitated to say that Yagami Light parried his blows with impeccable skill.

Impeccable was not a word he used lightly. And, perhaps this was like fencing, only the list of casualties was mounting, wasn't it?

They danced verbal circles around each other. They brushed each other's arms, reaching for paper. Comfort-zones abandoned like the foil that comes around chocolates as they each strive to prove that they're absolutely completely at ease with each other.

Light has nothing to hide, says the pad of his thumb that smoothes chocolate off L's bottom lip.

L smiles instead of spits at him.

Twenty five-

Heart attacks hurt more than he thought they would. Logically, he understood that there would be a massive amount of pain, but he didn't really comprehend, he supposes. Which is odd for him, given that his understanding of any situation is usually complete and instantaneous.

Light catches him before he can hit the ground, and he wants to _scream _in agony but can't seem to do anything except sag. Light is smirking at him, in a way that finally, finally bumps his certainty up to one hundred percent, and he shushes the parts of himself that are yelling that it's too late, because Near and Mello are still out there, and they are going to succeed him and they are going to solve this mystery. The circumstances surrounding his death, what with Misa's imminent capture, will leave nothing to doubt. Provided they find way to know what happened; no doubt Aizawa, or perhaps Ide, will come forwards, so long as they do then they will not be able to help but understand, and they will be able to trap Light. L will defeat Kira, no matter which incarnation of the position it is.

_You think you have won, _L thinks, trying to stare at Light, but his eyelids are so, so heavy. _But justice..._

And then he doesn't think anything, any more.


End file.
